I’d love to have film adaptations of my books, says Vineet Wankhede

Having been a hardcore fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle all his life, it’s only natural that Vineet Wankhede would have a penchant for mystery and suspense thrillers. With his debut novel Collateral, the Pune-based author aims to make a name for him as one of the promising mystery writers in the country.

The plot revolves around a website designer, who meets an unattended child in a grocery store — while he attempts to have a conversation with the lost girl, circumstances push him to take her with him and then a series of chaotic episodes follow. Talking about the inspiration, he says. “We all know how relatives from every corner of the state come together for a funeral. At one such funeral, a woman handed over a baby to me and left. I was holding the baby for almost two hours, and when I asked my relatives about the baby, no one knew about it! Though nothing bad happened, but I got the idea for my book.”

At a time when social media is considered very essential for marketing books, it comes as a surprise that Vineet consciously stays away from Facebook and Twitter. “I’m not a person who can keep posting stuff online. I quite like having a small group in WhatsApp to keep myself updated,” he shares.

But will this affect the reach of the book, we ask. “It does — but compared to funky love stories, mystery books anyways don’t get recognised much. But off late, my well-wishers have been requesting me to make my presence felt online. So, I guess in future, I might!”

Speaking about the response the book has had so far, Vineet says, “I won’t say that the book has had a historical response — but word of mouth has been helping it and there are several good reviews in Amazon — this has given me great confidence.”

The youngster, who is already working on his next work, which is based on a serial killer, says “I’d love to have film adaptations of my books. Even people, who have read Collateral, feel that it also looks like a screenplay with dialogues. I would love to see B’town actors bringing life to my characters!”